This is NEPCA's official website, containing both information about the organization and the latest news about the profession.

2017 NEPCA Conference

NEPCA's 2017 Fall Conference will be held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst ON OCTOBER 27-28, 2017.

Peter C. Rollins Book Prize

The deadline for publishers to submit nominations for the 2016 Rollins Prize is July 1, 2017. This prize will honor the best book written by a scholar working in New England or New York on a topic pertaining to popular or/and American culture during the year 2016.

Periodic updates and information will be made on this site and can be viewed by clicking on the 2017 Conference tab above.

The Campus Center Hotel advises they have a small number of hotel rooms available for Saturday night of the NEPCA conference. You can book one by calling them directly: 877-822-2110. Friday night is currently booked solid, but you could check for cancellations. Otherwise, check this site for other lodging options.

We at the PCA hope your summer went well and that your school year, for those of you teaching, learning, or parenting right now, has begun splendidly.

As October approaches, so does the deadline to propose your abstract for next year’s Popular Culture Association annual meeting. If you haven’t submitted your proposal yet, please do so right away, so you can join us in our triumphant return to the midwest next Spring.

See you in Indianapolis!

You can find the information you need for submitting your proposal at:

contemporary popular culture, black womanhood frequently takes centre stage. It occupies an increasingly central place and articulates new and renewed dimensions, prompting questions about the status of black women in the cultural imaginary of the US and beyond. Most prominently, Michelle Obama’s First Ladyship has sparked scholarly and media discussions around the significance of stereotypes associated with black women, the possibilities and limitations of public figures to create new images and anchor them in the cultural imaginary, and about the subject positions and images that express and shape constructions of black womanhood (cf. Harris-Perry 2011, Schäfer 2015, Spillers 2009). Further examples include the pop singer Beyoncé, who has proclaimed her commitment to feminism and designed an already iconic celebration of black motherhood (concerning Afro-futurist tropes), wildly popular TV shows like Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder which feature black female protagonists, or literary works and feminist manifestos such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) or We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017).

Our special issue aims to examine the multifaceted ideological implications of this proliferation of black womanhood in popular culture. We understand popular culture as a site where “collective social understandings are created” (cf. Stuart Hall 2009) and as a marketplace governed primarily by economic interests, but also trading in symbolic capital, identities, and collective fantasies. Popular culture thus may model new subject positions, unsettle cultural authorities, and question cultural ideals – intentionally or inadvertently so. The contributions to this special issue discuss representations and performances of black womanhood in the transatlantic sphere. They raise issues about the genealogies of these images and their empowering and limiting qualities, about the “affective agency” (Rebecca Wanzo) and subjecthood that black women claim and/or are assigned in these cultural productions, and about the signifying functions of the black female body in visual economies: How does contemporary popular culture negotiate, revise, or recalibrate stereotypical depictions of black women? How can representations of black womanhood be discussed from different theoretical vantage points, such as Afro-Pessimism, Critical Race Studies, Black Feminism? And how can they be positioned within new formations of the Black Atlantic, within (trans)national “affective economies” (Sara Ahmed) and contemporary discourses on race, class, gender, and age in the US and beyond?

Contributions may address a broad range of topics, pertaining to e.g. visual culture (comics, films, TV shows, etc.), material culture and bodily practices, literature, performances, or the arts. We welcome academic essays as well as images to our volume. Issues to be explored include but are not limited to:

· Black women as cultural agents

· Feminist agendas and their representation in cultural discourses

· Epistemologies of black womanhood and systems of knowledge production

· Afropessimisms and ontologies of black subjecthood

· Histories and genealogies of representing black womanhood

Contact Info:

Please submit abstracts (500 words maximum) and biographical information to Dr Katharina Gerund (Erlangen/Nürnberg) and Dr Stefanie Schäfer (Jena): stefanie@uni-jena.de and katharina.gerund@fau.deby January 15, 2018. Manuscripts of 5000 to 7000 words will be due by May 1, 2018.

Studies in American Humor (StAH), a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ), has published scholarly critical essays, review essays, and book reviews on all aspects of American humor since 1974. The premier journal for scholarship on humor, StAH addresses a wide spectrum of American humor, past and present. As a service to its audience of scholars and students in the humanities, especially literary, cultural, and media studies, StAH has featured an annual review of current scholarship, “The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies,” since 1999.

Submission Information

Submissions of essay manuscripts between 5000 and 8000 words are welcome on any topic, theme, practice, practitioner, and medium of American humor. StAH values transnational and interdisciplinary approaches as well as traditional critical and historical humanities scholarship. We are particularly interested in publishing essays on the visual humor of comics and animated cartoons; varieties of ethnic humor (African-American, Asian-American, Latinx, and Native American); online humor; television humor (late-night satire sketch comedy, and sit-coms); stand-up; vaudeville; and antebellum literary humor. One electronic copy of a manuscript should be submitted in Word or rtf format with documentation in Chicago endnote style following The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) to the journal’s online Editorial Manager portal http://www.editorialmanager.com/sah/; accompanying illustrations should be provided in jpg format. Additional details are available at our editorial portal and at <http://www.studiesinamericanhumor.org>. Authors are responsible for securing permissions if their accepted submissions contain copyrighted material beyond fair use.

The journal also invites individuals to send books for review; books and essays for our annual feature, “The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies”; and previously unpublished (or long lost) primary sources with short analytical essays for our occasional feature, “The Recovery Room.”

Essay submissions and other materials in electronic form for “The Recovery Room” should be submitted via the Editorial Manager portal at the address above. Please submit other publication queries to Lawrence Howe, Editor of Studies in American Humor, at StudiesinAmericanHumor@roosevelt.edu. Books and inquiries about book reviews should be sent to David Gillota, Associate Editor.

A Special Session of the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association

Sponsored by Frankenstein and the Fantastic, an outreach effort of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

For the 2018 Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 28-31 March 2018 Proposals no later than 1 October 2017

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2018. It is a work that has permeated popular culture, appearing in versions found across the globe, in all known media, and for all age groups. However, many aspects of this tradition remain underexplored by scholars. One of these is how the story and its characters have manifested in children’s and young adult culture.

Like Frankensteiniana for older audiences, versions of the story for young audiences offer interesting and important approaches to the novel and its textual progeny, and they deserve to be better known and analyzed, especially since, for many, works designed for the young represent their first encounters with Frankenstein and its characters.

Criticism on these works remains limited; though a growing number of scholars (see the selected bibliography appended to this call) have begun to offer more in the way of critical analysis, as opposed to just seeing them as curiosities. It is our hope that this session will continue this trend and foster further discussion and debate on these texts

In this session, we seek proposals that explore representations of Frankenstein, its story, and/or its characters in children’s and young adult culture. We are especially interested in how the Creature is received in these works, especially by children and young adult characters, but other approaches (and comments on other characters) are also valid.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

Please submit paper proposals (100 to 200 words) and a short biographic statement into the PCA Database by 1 October 2017. The site is accessible at https://conference.pcaaca.org/. Do include your university affiliation if you have one, your email address, your telephone number, and your audio-visual needs.

Upon submission, be sure, also, to send your details to the organizers (Michael A. Torregrossa, Fantastic [Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction] Area Chair, and Amie Doughty, Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area Chair) at FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com, notifying them of your intentions to serve on the panel. Please use the subject ìFrankenstein at PCAî.

Presentations at the conference will be limited to 15 to 20 minutes, depending on final panel size.

Do address any inquiries about the session to FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com.

The Popular Culture Association does offer a limited number of travel grants for the conference; nevertheless, potential presenters, when submitting their proposal, should be sure to have the necessary funds to attend the conference, as no shows are noted.

There are just ten days left to register for NEPCA’s fall conference. Please do so immediately. We have a very long waiting list of presenters that we will begin to call upon for those whose conference fees are not paid by the end of the day on 31 August.

The 2018 Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Indiana, March 28-31, 2018. The New England Studies Area invites presentations on any aspect of New England popular culture: Architecture; Art; Ecology/Environment; Economics; Fashion; Film and Theater, especially films made in New England, and plays set in the region, e.g. ‘The Crucible’; Folklore; Food; Language and Literature; Politics; History; Music; Sports; Celebrities; Entertainment; Gambling/Casinos; Industries, e.g. Fishing; Regional Cultures; Sports and Recreation; Tourism and Travel; and numerous other topics. The subjects are endless. More New England-specific topics would include: Famous personalities, such as Bette Davis; Katherine Hepburn; John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family; Rosalind Russell; Harriet Beecher Stowe; and New England crimes and criminals, e.g. Lizzie Borden in Fall River; Buddy Cianci in Providence.

Controversy will not be shunned!

Please submit a proposal to only one area at a time. All proposals and abstracts must be submitted through the PCA Database. See the website at ncp@pcaaca.org. . Presentations should be 15-20 minutes in length and lively in nature! The deadline for the submission of a 200-word abstract is October 1, 2018. Database is already open for submissions. Acceptance will be earlier than usual as well to enhance your ability to seek funding.

Although all proposals should be submitted to the PCA Database directly, please also cc: me; please include university or organization affiliation (if applicable), telephone number, and e-mail address. Graduate students welcome. Individual and full panel proposals are considered. Please feel confident about attendance if you are accepted.

If you give a paper, you must register for the conference. See: http://www.pcaaca.org. Site also includes information on travel grants and rates at the conference hotel.